Don’t expect a Legion of Decency recommendation for this snide condemnation of Catholic corruption from the ecstatic point...
In Goetz’s debut novel, Father Emery Flanagan, though a venerable and thoughtful priest, wrestles agonizingly with the fleshly temptations and sin surrounding his ministry.
The Catholic Church and its sex scandals is hardly an original topic for barbs, but Goetz’s satirical novel—comprising interior monologues, letters, diary entries, and direct entreaties to God by Father Flanagan—is a funny, fresh take on organized religion. An ecumenical cleric with an unflagging faith in his Lord and church and a fierce, almost neurotic drive to justify/forgive/overlook the many transgressions of his flock, Flanagan does, initially, come across as a good man at heart—even as he finds himself embarrassingly afflicted with the lustful urges that manifest themselves in the forms of chronic irritable bowel syndrome and perpetual erections. Although oddly progressive in his pretzel-shaped intellectual rationalizations for others, Flanagan is positively medieval in his own private, purgative rituals. He sleeps on a straw mattress, flagellates himself, and lugs around a large, custom-carved wooden cross (sometimes he delegates the task to his senile sexton). Plot twists and turns are often hard to discern through the filter of Flanagan’s religious rantings and mounting delusions. He loses his prized altar boy to maturity and marriage, and a poor substitute (dubbed “the goat”) takes on satanic proportions. Distractions undermine his attempt to lead a children’s procession for Christ in reaction to the appearance of a brothel in town. Finally, the unstable hero lands in the midst of an incredibly foul deal between a gangster-ish local millionaire and a bishop that ensures more cash for the diocese. Goetz’s prose and characters bring to mind such caustic novelists as Joseph Heller, Evelyn Waugh, and John Kennedy Toole, not to mention the Christopher Durang stage play Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All For You, and, God knows, that is a strong congregation.
Don’t expect a Legion of Decency recommendation for this snide condemnation of Catholic corruption from the ecstatic point of view of a heroically flawed protagonist.Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4787-7594-2
Page Count: 246
Publisher: Outskirts Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 29, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
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